Great programmers can make great stuff using anything.
Or maybe they'll bitch up to high heaven because doing that makes them slower. Engineers don't bitch about using shitty languages to be whiny Prima Donnas. They bitch because using shitty languages makes them slower.
People like to feel like they're getting things done. If they're using a language that looks like it was put together from newspaper clippings every step takes much longer than it does with proper tools. And that makes people mad. In fact, I would go so far as to say the ones who don't bitch are the absolutely terrible engineers because they must be doing it just for the billable hours.
Go find the most genius engineer you can in any other field and make him work with the crappiest tools you can find that he can still eventually get his work done with and see how well your assertion holds.
Forced to use PHP? And it's crappy and slow to build stuff in? So write some tools that compile to PHP.
What I'm saying is that great programmers work with the limitations and build the tools they need to make the limitations moot.
(unless you're the single exception where your business is just that compelling...)
Just because I _can_ doesn't mean that I _want to_.
I'm willing to work in lots of environments. In the last 2 years I have done projects for pay in Perl, PHP, Java, C++, Python and various in house languages you probably haven't heard of. However I have to be paid a healthy premium for the displeasure of working with PHP. And if I was asked to do it all the time, eventually I'd leave and find a better job working in something else.
Would you rather do something boring in a beautiful language vs. something interesting in an ugly language?
Let's say he's great enough to get lots of job offers. And let's say that among those, the ones in his favorite language - the one he actually enjoys using - also tend to pay more, and his average coworker in them is more proficient.
Is he terrible to start filtering his job searches by that language?
